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POLLS! With only 585 days until the Louisiana Gubernatorial primary, let’s go ahead and speculate!

Sure, we have at least twocandidates that have actually declared their intention to run. But several others are circling, and so their names will be thrown into the hat for consideration by the pollsters and prognosticators. LaPolitics reports on such a speculative affair by Louisiana State Medical Society and PhRMA (big doc and big drugs). LET’S GO TO THE TOPLINES:

And there you have it. Mitch Landrieu is out-polling David Vitter in this mock jungle primary. Yes, that’s worthy of a little bit of a “interesting,” even this many days out. With his sister on the ballot (and looking like she’ll be in a very tough race), Mitch Landrieu seems unaffected by those headwinds and benefits from a decisive victory in the New Orleans Mayor’s race. More from the poll:

f the election for US Senate were held today, and the choice was between (ROTATE) Bill Cassidy, the Republican candidate and Mary Landrieu, the Democratic candidate, who would you vote for?

Mary Landrieu 45- Bill Cassidy 44 [tightening from 53-39 in January]

…

In the race for Attorney General 2 Republicans may run, but no Democrats have announced yet. In this election would you vote for (ROTATE: Jeff Landry, a Republican candidate, Buddy Caldwell, a Republican candidate), (ALWAYS LAST:) or would you vote for the Democratic candidate?

Sen. David Vitter says he’ll decide by January whether to run for governor of Louisiana in 2015.

The Republican senator, elected in 2004, told the Associated Press that he’ll send out an e-mail Wednesday to let supporters know of his interest in the 2015 race. Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, cannot run again because of term limits.

“This is the logical time to do it, if I’m ever going to do it,” Vitter told the AP.

Vitter is one of the more popular politicians in Louisiana, with a job-approval rating of over 58% in a recent Southern Media & Opinion Research poll. He has attracted headlines in the past few months for his fight against President Obama’s health care law, saying he wants to make sure that members of Congress and their staffs don’t get special treatment.

Vitter has rebounded from a 2007 scandal in which his phone number was found among a client list of the so-called D.C. Madam. He apologized for what he called a “very serious sin.”

The good news for the Sinator? The whore scandal that would have brought down any human candidate (for the Sinator is not a human, but a cold-blooded reptilian humanoid, of course) is now in the 4th ‘graph of his mini-bio! That’s progress!!

Still, what David Vitter lacks in a pulse, he more than makes up for in his dastardly, almost evil genius-like, ability to concoct crafty, laser-focused political coups against his enemies. In the Game of Thrones that is Louisiana politics, Vitter is the vicious, deadly, and ruthless Little Finger. Scorned by many, with a sordid past, but willing to do what it takes to destroy those in his way.

Recall, as well, that David Vitter has a SuperPAC roving out there. He was a “SPECIAL GUEST” at the latest gator round-up in the spring, and if that’s any indication, he’s already begun to think about 2015 more seriously than he’s letting on. People don’t just go skirting campaign finance laws to raise money for a SuperPAC that purportedly isn’t “supporting David Vitter directly,” but so obviously is unless they have something big in mind.

The Landrieu family name might be the best thing Democrats in Louisiana have going for them. Looking ahead to the 2015 race for Governor, Mitch Landrieu has an early lead over both of the high profile Republicans we tested against him in hypothetical match ups. He’s up 45/42 on Senator David Vitter and 45/35 on Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne.

Yes, we made this. Yes, you may use it.

Landrieu has very strong statewide favorability numbers- 44% of voters in the state have a favorable opinion of him to just 24% with a negative one. His popularity with Democrats is predictable but even among Republicans he comes close to breaking even with a 30/31 favorability spread. He leads the two GOP hopefuls because like his sister he pulls 20-23% of the Republican vote in the head to heads.

“I advise anyone who thinks he knows something about politics to go down to Louisiana and take a postgraduate course.” –Texas U.S. Sen. Tom Connally, 1932.

If you are obsessed with politics, Louisiana is the place for you – especially over the next four years.

In that time, Louisiana voters will choose a new governor and elect (or re-elect) two U.S. senators. Those elections will probably trigger a flood of competitive races to fill resulting vacancies, as at least one U.S. senator, several U.S. House members and three statewide elected officials may be vacating their seats to run for higher office.

Those races, in turn, would trigger a domino effect of vacancies for lower offices — from the U.S. House all the way down to school board – as other officials scramble to run for the multitude of open seats.

Yes, no one should forget the horrible consequences of letting Bobby Jindal run wild through the next two years. We needn’t look past that to consider the next step. The Governor’s mansion is the most powerful office in the State of Louisiana. The wide-ranging powers emanating from the Capitol’s forth floor control nearly every aspect of Government through direct, or through fiscal, levers. Every Mayor, Police Juror, and Sheriff bow before the all powerful dictates of the Louisiana Governor. By virtue of history and tradition, he controls the legislature, which means he controls the purse. He sets the agenda, constructs the model budget and heavily influences the capital outlay to build new infrastructure for which local officials cut ribbons. Moreover, the Governor makes over 1700 direct appointments to boards and commissions all over the state. These range from the benign to the highly sought-after LSU board or Board of Regents spots.

No one person makes more impact on our daily lives in Louisiana than the Governor. And that’s why the next Governor is so important. We cannot get this one wrong.

Country music star Sammy Kershaw couldn’t keep Mitch from winning in the primary, with 701887 votes. Hmm, how many votes did the multi-million dollar campaign of Bobby Jindal garner that year in the primary?

“Bobby” Jindal (R)

53.88%

699275

Sure, it’s not apples to apples. But the simple fact that Democrat Mitch Landrieu won 2000 more votes than the political “rising star” Bobby Jindal earned is sizable. Remember, Jindal was seen as less of a partisan figure back then, and many Democrats considered his candidacy a page-turner. Jindal was considered an “ethics champ” with pragmatic, technocratic governing philosophies focused on results. Of course, from day 1, he largely abandoned this philosophy and became a screeching partisan conservative focused only on his ambition for even higher office. Under these circumstances, the fact that Mitch Landrieu still roughly equaled Jindal despite his party “disadvantage” and the moribund status of the Democratic Party in 2007 (not to mention the still persistent Katrina displacement of African-American voters in the Landrieu’s New Orleans stronghold) means one very clear thing: Mitch Landrieu has continued to maintain a strong statewide popularity that makes him extremely competitive in ways that other Democrats are not.

Louisiana could have a fun race for Governor in 2015. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is seen pretty positively statewide, with 49% of voters rating him favorably to 26% with an unfavorable opinion. In a hypothetical contest with Senator David Vitter, who has a 46/38 approval rating, the two would be tied at 44%. Landrieu would have a slight edge over Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne at 44-42. If Landrieu decided to run it appears that it would be a competitive race.

The Magellan poll, conducted Oct. 2 through Oct. 4 with 2,682 likely voters covered a number of topics, including presidential, congressional and gubernatorial elections. The margin of error is 1.9 percent… 31.1% picked Vitter; 29.4% picked Landrieu; and 16.7 percent were undecided or wanted none of the choices.

Like this:

Don’t look now, but the 2015 Governor’s race is over. David Vitter is your new Governor. And the little shop of horrors that is the 4th floor of the capitol just got a new haunt.

Wait, you say it can be true? It’s only 2012? And People actually have to vote on these things? Three years from now?

We won’t spoil the fun.

David Vitter’s pollster conducted an extensive, although strangely weighed, poll to confirm their own suspicions: Diaper Dave is just killing it! Says his own pollster, John Diez:

Magellan principal John Diez, who released the poll, moved to Baton Rouge in 2006 to become executive director of Vitter’s Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority. The committee’s website still listed Diez as executive director Monday.

LA-GOV: 2015 – If the election was being held today, for whom would you vote if the
candidates were DAVID VITTER, REPUBLICAN, MITCH LANDRIEU DEMOCRAT; JAY DARDENNE, REPUBLICAN; JOHN KENNEDY, REPUBLICAN; MIKE STRAIN, REPUBLICAN and JOHN GEORGES, DEMOCRAT?

DAVID VITTER 31.1%

MITCH LANDRIEU 29.4%

JAY DARDENNE 6.5%

JOHN KENNEDY 7.2%

MIKE STRAIN 3.1%

JOHN GEORGES 6.0%

UND/SOMEONE ELSE 16.7%

So, an open primary full of big money candidates (Georges spent a small fortune on his 2007 Governor’s race, and his 2010 Mayor’s race in New Orleans), David Vitter runs within the margin of error with Mitch Landrieu. That can’t be considered a “win,” can it? That bodes well for Mitchell, and therefore, for Democrats.

We’ll deal with the strange poll sampling later, but suffice to say, these are good numbers for Mitchell.

And still thinking ahead to the 2015 election for Governor in Louisiana. 8. If the election was being held today, for whom would you vote if the candidates were DAVID VITTER, REPUBLICAN and MITCH LANDRIEU DEMOCRAT?

Magellan’s poll is fraught with disastrous flaws: It severely oversamples white Republicans, by at least 15 points; it’s not proportionate among Congressional districts; its methodology and questioning are leading and disingenuous. It’s heavily skewed toward conservatives, which is not surprising; after all, it was led by a Vitter-man. And there’s hardly any mention of Bobby Jindal or his policies; Vitter isn’t even slightly interested in how Jindal is polling.

The kicker: How great is David Vitter doing at his job? According to his own pollster, Mr. Diez, pretty god damn great:

And do you approve or disapprove of the job that DAVID VITTER is doing as U.S. SENATOR?

APPROVE 59.1%

DISAPPROVE 33.2%

UNSURE/NO OPINION 7.7%

In the SMOR poll last week, Vitter was looking at 52.3 fav, 31.3 unfav. Not bad, but below Senator Mary Landrieu’s 53.7/28.4 rating.

What appears to be a conflict in the polls centers on Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu. In Pinsonat’s poll, Landrieu has the highest job performance rating of any of Louisiana’s elected officials with 61.7 percent favorable (12.1 percent excellent and 49.6 percent good). In Diez’s poll 39.5 percent said they would vote to re-elect her but 50.8 percent said they would prefer someone else. The others wouldn’t say.

According to several sources inside city government, Mayor Mitch Landrieu is set to endorse former Councilwoman (and former State Senator) Cynthia Willard-Lewis in the city’s hotly contested at-large council race. Legislative sources indicate that the Mayor’s office has reached out to local officials to pressure them to endorse Willard-Lewis and also to join Landrieu in a press conference announcing the Mayor’s intentions sometime early next week. Those same sources suggest that many legislators have declined to participate or endorse due to Willard-Lewis’ possible association with an ultra-high-profile scandal erupting in the New Orleans area. As the Democrats only and last hope for statewide office, we can’t see this as a good thing for Mitch Landrieu. Mayor Landrieu is repeatedly mentioned as a 2015 gubernatorial candidate. From Al Hunt in Bloomberg just this week:

He’s likely to be re-elected in two years. A year later he’ll have to decide whether he stays or, as maybe the only Democrat who could win a statewide race, runs for governor.

With Mitch gone as early as 2015, is a Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis his hand-picked successor as the ground-breaking first African-American female Mayor of New Orleans?

According to our friends over at Slabbed, Cythnia Willard-Lewis may also be embroiled in a massive political corruption case emanating from River Birch Landfill in Jefferson Parish. The long and short of the story is that, after Hurricane Katrina, Fred Heebe, owner of River Birch, angled to shut down or divert all the trash and debris from hurricane-clean-up to his landfill, River Birch. This was, and apparently continues to be, big money business for Heebe.

Heebe’s tentacles, however, have yet to been placed on any currently relevant (or serving) politicians. Most of his friends have been outed, targeted, or retired. However, a tipster points out some strong clues that might point to Cynthia Willard-Lewis’ possible involvement in the River Birch scandal. First, slabbed reviews a River Birch-related lawsuit by one of Heebe’s competitors:

Only recently revealed, it appears that the plaintiffs’ counsel in the related judicial challenges brought by “concerned citizens” of New Orleans East seeking to challenge “the basis under which Waste Management sough to operate its landfill in an area of the City of New Orleans that is not zoned for such use,” Mr. Kyle Schonekas and Ms. Joelle Evans, were both secretly on retainer by the River Birch Defendants as undisclosed “lobbyists.”

Upon information and belief, the River Birch Defendants and their secret lobbyists, Schonekas and Evans, also enlisted the services of Walter Willard to assist with their litigation against the Chef Menteur landfill and challenging Mayor Nagin’s emergency authorization. Mr. Willard was retained, at least in part, to curry favor and political influence. In particular, Mr. Willard is the brother of Cynthia Willard-Lewis, then the New Orleans Councilperson for District E where the Chef Menteur landfill was located. At one point, Ms. Willard-Lewis was one of the strongest proponents and supporters of the Chef Menteur landfill because she deemed it critical to expediting the clean-up and recovery of her district in New Orleans East… Upon the retention of her brother to allegedly “assist” in the River Birch sponsored litigation against the landfill, Ms. Willard-Lewis suddenly reversed course and became a vocal opponent to the continued operation of the Chef Menteur landfill. Ms. Willard-Lewis attributes her changed position to the public outcry over health and safety concerns arising from the location of the landfill.

As River Birch landfill owner Fred Heebe saw a $160 million contract with Jefferson Parish slip from his grasp in December amid lawsuits and whispers of a back-room deal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone offered him some free, unsolicited advice. “If Heebe had one firing synapse, he would go speak to Letten’s posse and purge himself of this sordid episode and let them go after the council and public officials,” he wrote.

Perhaps it is no secret that Federal prosecutors are circling “council” and public officials, but it’s an awful specific mention and might point to several potential targets.

The question at hand, of course, is to what degree is Former Senator and Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis related to the ongoing Federal River Birch investigation. Maybe we don’t know, and Mayor Landrieu does. But it becomes a little hard to understand why Landrieu would involve himself in a race that poses serious credibility challenges for any future statewide races. New Orleans corruption allegations or associations have sunk statewide campaign efforts of politicians like Congressman Bill Jefferson and others. With Landrieu’s high-marks continuing with his city, is this a risk he can just afford to take? Can Democrats risk losing their one rising star over a meaningless council race in New Orleans?